The heightened focus on wellness in dermatology residency education.

Dermatology residents and dermatology faculty members experience stress in the workplace, placing them at risk for burnout. As a profession, dermatologists have one of the fastest growing rates of burnout clinical manifestations across all specialties. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has revised its program requirements for residency programs to include greater emphasis on actions to promote wellness. Examples of actions to promote wellness that are used currently in dermatology and other residency and medical education settings are explored.

Psychological aspects of painful medical conditions in children. I. Developmental aspects and assessment.

The assessment and development of pain in children is reviewed in the first part of a two-part series. Assessment of pain in children has relied on self-report measures that have included visual analogue procedures using concrete stimuli for ratings. Behavioral assessment procedures are more sophisticated, but research on behavioral assessment of pediatric pain has begun to emergy only recently. There has been very little research on the developmental aspects of pain tolerance and pain threshold in children. There are preliminary indications that children's thoughts and attitudes about pain may change with age in a manner that contributes to more intense feelings of pain in adolescence than childhood. Children undergoing painful medical procedures show declining emotional outbursts with age and increasing signs of self-control and muscular rigidity. Possibilities for integrating the study of the developmental aspects of pain with social learning theory, cognitive developmental theory, and the psychology of physical symptom perception are discussed.

Psychological aspects of painful medical conditions in children. II. Personality factors, family characteristics and treatment.

In part II of a two-part series, the psychological aspects of painful medical conditions and their treatment are reviewed. While considerable attention has been devoted to the study of personality, family characteristics, treatment of recurrent abdominal pain, growing pains and headaches, with few exceptions these studies have significant methodological problems. Studies of the psychological aspects of pain associated with such pediatric disorders as cancer, sickle cell anemia, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and burns are generally only beginning to emerge, but at least a few of the single-case studies show appropriate attention to methodology. Areas needing further research are discussed.